Etymology

razor

ra·zor
R1A1Z10O1R1

Today it means: A keen-edged knife of peculiar shape, used in shaving the hair from the face or other parts of the body. Full definition →

Middle English rasour ← Old French rasour
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Old French · derived fromrasour
  2. Middle English · inherited fromrasour
  3. English todayrazor

From Middle English rasour, from Old French rasour, from raser (“to scrape, to shave”). More at rat. By surface analysis, raze + -or. Displaced the native Old English sċierseax (literally “shaving knife”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.